Saturday, November 19, 2005

Police state creep

Rolling Stone digs up the dirt on the propaganda war and unearths John Rendon. It's a must read, detailing the chain of misinformation planted by this perception management professional in order to sell the war and what a surprise. One of his "little helpers" is Judy Miller.

This however, is the most disturbing paragraph.

Rendon is one of the most influential of the private contractors in Washington who are increasingly taking over jobs long reserved for highly trained CIA employees. In recent years, spies-for-hire have begun to replace regional desk officers, who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the agency's twenty-four-hour crisis center; analysts, who sift through reams of intelligence data; and even counterintelligence officers in the field, who oversee meetings between agents and their recruited spies. According to one senior administration official involved in intelligence-budget decisions, half of the CIA's work is now performed by private contractors -- people completely unaccountable to Congress. Another senior budget official acknowledges privately that lawmakers have no idea how many rent-a-spies the CIA currently employs -- or how much unchecked power they enjoy.

Do you recall being asked by our government if it's okay with us, for them to spend our tax dollars outsourcing intelligence work to private contractors who require no oversight from the Congress? I don't either because if they had asked, I'm pretty sure I would have said no.